The 4th Parker book is as awesome as the first three. Undoubtedly, this the best crime fiction you can get in the moden world. Coupled with the comic book medium, it rocks.

Really, even if you don't like comic books and are afraid of the superhero-poisoned teenage subculture, try Parker. My bet, you won't be disappointed. If they ever publish that in Russian, I'm buying it for my pops on day one.

This yellow colored Parker looked best of them all. And read best. It was the simplest story – just one gigantic hit, not on a bank, not on an armed vehicle – a hit on a whole town, banks, jewelers, company safes, all of it.

Absolutely delightful and absolutely brutal – though not as brutal as it used to be. “You've misjudged me. I don't kill as an easy way out. If I kill, it's because I don't have any choice.”

Parker from The Hunter is still in rage and waging a full fledged war on the Outfit, a US undercover gambling syndicate stretching coast to coast. More bodies rolling, more action, more fun.

Second novel was much more gripping than the first – at least, to my taste – and much more complex, both narratively and graphically. Never read the original, so hard for me to compare that to the base material. The built-in pages with description of various hits were a gem – but not only they.

I am seriously considering forgoing some sleep tonight and reading the third part The Score in one go. Oh, well, tomorrow is another day.

I don't remember reading Richard Stark's Parker novels when I was a kid (though I did read a ton of crime fiction at the time) – but I might as well did read some. Nor I knew that Payback movie starring Mel Gibson was based on The Hunter.

A simple enough and quite cruel story of a criminal getting his revenge against a former accomplice who had crossed him – and later, against the crime syndicate that the guy worked for. Gruesome, as the main protagonist is a criminal not to high on morals, so quite a few innocent bystanders die here – not so typical in our Hollywood PG-13 oriented world, it has immediately come to my mind.

Nice art by Darwyn Cooke – Wikipedia claims that the late Donald E. Westlake (the real Richard Stark) supervised The Hunter and was impressed by it. Will read the follow-ups for sure – The Outfit and The Score are out so far. I wonder, how many more issues Mr. Cooke will cook, as Richard Stark wrote 24(!) Parker novels.